But I do think both make a mistake common to a lot of people on the right in imagining that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio will appeal to a significant number of Hispanic voters who aren’t already Republicans. Don’t get me wrong — they’re great conservatives who will go far and, I hope, do our country a lot of good. But nearly two-thirds of “Hispanics” in the U.S. are of Mexican origin, another 9 percent Puerto Rican, and about 7 percent Central American — neither a white Cuban from Miami nor a white half-Cuban Southern Baptist from Texas is going to stand out to such voters as one of them.

Put another way, most Hispanics aren’t likely to identify with conservative Cuban Republicans, which makes the attempt to appeal to them on the basis of identity politics even less likely to succeed than usual. It is an attempt to practice identity politics without really understanding the identities involved. It’s pandering without going to the trouble of paying lip service to the issues that matter to most of these voters, which is just half-hearted pandering.

Goldberg is right when he says that no demographic voting bloc is monolithic, nor is the majority of that bloc bound to support the same policies indefinitely. This doesn’t mean that a majority of that bloc is likely to support the GOP unless they believe that the party represents and serves their interests. These voters may be persuadable, but that doesn’t mean that they are going to be persuaded by what the GOP has to offer. It’s possible that Cruz could communicate the Republican message more effectively to these voters than someone else could, but if the message itself is unappealing it doesn’t matter very much who delivers it.*

He is also right that immigration is not always the top issue for most Hispanic voters. I would point out that the people most likely to emphasize changing immigration policy as the best way to increase the Republican share of the Hispanic vote have always been Republican advocates for liberalizing immigration policy. These advocates have been trying to portray their preferred policy as politically advantageous, and their recommended approach has repeatedly failed. That doesn’t mean that the issues that sometimes trump immigration are necessarily winning ones for Republicans. In general, if there are other issues that take precedence they tend to be those where Republicans are traditionally weak (e.g., economic issues, health care, etc.).

As for younger voters, it is not enough for the GOP to nominate younger candidates if they are going to follow Rubio’s example and adopt a foreign policy that is still overwhelmingly opposed by younger voters. There are no guarantees that the gap among younger voters would close if the GOP weren’t so closely identified with disastrous foreign policy views, but it would be a start.

* Cruz is reportedly quite conservative on immigration, which is good news for conservatives, but it is not likely to satisfy the voters some are expecting him to win over.

9 Responses to Cruz, Rubio, and the Illusions of “Outreach”

Goldberg is repeating an old myth that fanciful Republicans like to comfort themselves with: if we can get a bright charismatic “Hispanic” candidate within our ranks then he will lure all those Mexicans away from their deeply entrenched Democratic voting tendencies. Never going to happen, and the GOP is wasting time, money, and it’s soul (on the immigration issue) attempting this idiotic pandering. Steve Sailer gets this, and directs the GOP to focus its efforts on people who will actually vote for it: white males. It’s called the Sailer Strategy, and I’m willing to wager that quite a few TAC readers are familiar with it.

While most TAC readers would happily vote for Cruz, 90+% of the Spanish speaking, Mestizo immigrants (“Hispanics”) never will. It’s time for the GOP’s over-paid strategists to accept the fact that they will never win California again, and find a new way.

The GOP will not win the Latino vote because the national party is overwhelmingly hostile to Latino issues… From the drug war, voting rights, to immigration, and economic backstops (like infrastructure, taxes, etc)just as most sane people have abandoned the GOP because the party stands for not only greed, but foreign adventurism wholly rejected by the majority of Americans. Er Good luck with that.

It has long been recognized that Republicans do not push forward black and Hispanic candidates in order to attract black and Hispanic voters, but rather moderate white voters who are otherwise embarrassed to vote for a party notorious for being “insensitive” to such minorities. For this purpose, a Southern Baptist Cuban is as good as a Mexican Catholic or Pentecostal. If Ted Cruz does gain Romney any votes he wouldn’t otherwise have, though, it will be because Cruz has Ron Paul’s rare endorsement, not the color of his skin. But considering the number of Ron Paul supporters who took seriously son Rand’s endorsement of Mitt Romney, I wouldn’t expect much to come from Cruz’s willingness to be identified with the Romney campaign.